Breakfast Topic: What's your approach to guild achievements?
by Brian Cutaia 
Mar 27th 2011 at 8:00AM
Back when patch 3.0.2 hit, World of Warcraft took a page from the rest of the gaming world by adding in those ever-addicting things called "achievements." No doubt you've had plenty of experience with them by now. If you haven't specifically worked to complete any, you've at least stumbled upon a shiny flashing box or two. Not everyone's a fan of these systems, of course -- but for many of us, there's a lot of fun to be had in these secondary objectives.
Fast forward two years, and Cataclysm has ushered in a new era of virtual accomplishment with the new guild achievements. While they initially allowed guilds to level past the daily experience cap, they have since been hotfixed to play more of a non-mandatory role in the success of a guild. Essentially, they are now just like individual achievements -- except damn near impossible to complete without a little help from your friends.
I've personally always been a fan of achievement hunting, so I've been thoroughly enjoying this new subset of tasks to work toward. In this spirit, I've definitely done some things I might not have done before. Critter Kill Squad, for example, led my guild to a rather fun midnight murdering spree in Terrorweb Tunnel. Also, for the first time, I'm in a guild arena team doing regular matches. Hell, I even decided which alts to level based on which race/class combos we needed the most.
Have the new guild achievements caused you to make any of these kinds of changes? Are you perhaps taking a more languid approach by slaughtering penguins and bunnies only when it happens to be convenient? Maybe, like with regular achievements, there are a lot of you out there who simply don't care one whit. Tell us all about it!
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
klink-o Mar 27th 2011 8:06AM
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/03/10/breakfast-topic-how-hard-are-you-working-on-guild-achievements
Okay so it's not exactly the same, but close enough.
Iirdan Mar 27th 2011 10:59AM
You're right, we're sorry for submitting ideas for Breakfast Topics into Seed without first consulting with everybody else doing the same thing to make sure that no two topics are even remotely similar, because even if they were published weeks apart that's just poor form, right?
(cutaia) Mar 27th 2011 3:38PM
Honestly, when I saw that one, I was surprised they bought both it and mine. I'm guessing maybe two different people were going through Seed submissions. Regardless, as mentioned, these Seed submissions were all submitted for a deadline about a month ago, so if two of us wrote similar articles, it was done without knowledge of the other article and only shows that it's a topic on the minds of many people...
Hor Mar 27th 2011 8:10AM
Specifically we've gone after those guild achievements that offered some reward, for example I've crated a few thousand flasks on an alt. We also held a Fishing Extravagazna event, where members raced off to various pools across the globe. After an hour, all returned to Org to turn in their catch, the best fisherman were given rewards and the guild ended up with a new achievement and a new Feast recipe available.
Beyond that, there are subsets of members who are really gung ho about getting guild achievements and those that are not. So, we keep plugging away at them little by little, but once the "reward" achievements are done I think a lot of people lose interest.
Succulent Mar 27th 2011 8:15AM
They're ok but mostly offer very little in the form of incentive for many of the group goals. This makes it pretty difficult to get people interested in them.
The worst guild achievement is the 55 reps one -because it has nothing to do with guilds-. It requires 1 person in the guild to get 55 individual reps to exalted. How is that a guild achievement? It's very silly.
Fragments Mar 27th 2011 8:39AM
Yeah, I agree. It should be like... 200 reps to exalted. From the entire guild. Doubles count.
The 200 isn't set in stone, of course. Any arbitrary number which suits the purpose will do.
Zibit Mar 27th 2011 9:14AM
This was described as being a guild achievement with progress shared among members in 3.3.5. Sadly, you are correct, it only counts the member with the most exalted reps. It seems players are getting varied responses from GMs... from a fix being in the works... to it being intended solely as an incentive for guilds to help that aforementioned member get the last few reps he needs.
Unfortunately, this is one of those bugs that is clearly just that, a bug. I understand priorities. But I hope for all the guilds which don't have that special achievement, um, person, that this does not become another "Working As Intended" issue. They want their pets too! Hopefully by 4.1...
As an aside, it's these issues that remind me sometimes GMs need sympathy too. :D It seems when the dev team shifts a fix priority, it's sometimes shifted so low they forget to even tell the GMs what's up!
/sarcasmoff
gewalt Mar 27th 2011 11:29AM
its just bugged, but blizz hasn't stated when they plan on fixing it.
53 reps... bored to tears.
Manadar Mar 27th 2011 8:31AM
Most of them offer no reward, and most are pretty insane for a tight 10-man guild, so no, we're not really going for anything guild related, except the realm first kills from raids.
Groth Mar 27th 2011 8:57AM
Alot of the guild achievements are alot harder for 10 man guilds. Things like the the seafood feast need something like 8.6 hours grinding per person, assuming that everyone helps. If there's only one or two people trying to get there, it's a mammoth task which takes forever!
Neirin Mar 27th 2011 12:13PM
To be fair, a 25 man guild runs into essentially the same problem, just slightly less grinding per person. It's only the large guilds that run multiple raid groups and have a stable of socials and alts that can really breeze through it. It's actually easier for a leveling guild than a hardcore raiding guild. I think that switching things like that is a good thing. Just like raiders don't like blizz nerfing heroics to cater to casuals, casuals don't like everything in the endgame being catered to raiders.
Gracandrea Mar 27th 2011 8:58AM
We are all working together on stuff.
We had a fishing contest to get "that's a lot of bait" done and got the feast recipe.
We're working through the old raids. So we have so far, Classic Dungeonmaster, Classic Raider and BC Heroic Dungeonmaster. We're starting on BC raids next.
We're at 440ish on the flask achieve and we're getting the mining one knocked out.
Critter Kill Squad? Within two weeks.
And we were lucky that one gal in our guild had 53 exalted reps before this started. So she got the last two knocked out. (lots of Molten Core and LOTS of daillies)
Right now I'm making most of the flasks but my guildees are handing me the mats - mainly because I'm the elixir master.
Darias.Perenolde Mar 27th 2011 9:05AM
Our guild was always a bit nuts, so with the variety of interests in-guild, no achievement -- other than hard-core raiding content -- has been safe. Both Critter Kill Squad AND the rewardless one after that was brought on by the massacre of thousands of turkeys in the Fjords. The crafting ones are ardently being worked on as well.
For our usual Saturday night gettogethers, we've spent the last few weeks downing Outland Raider. This has been loads of fun as a lot of our players either A) never saw the content, B) never saw the content because they're new to the game, or C) never finished the content. On a selfish note, I do have a low-70s hunter who's almost totally pimped out in Tier 6 Gronnstalker's gear. My questing through Outland is insane now!
We're approaching guild level 23 now, and the guildies are all banding together -- totally without leadership's push -- to find out the best way to get us plowing to 25. Lots of mathing is going on to optimize guild xp from dailies, questing, and heroics. It's awesome to see the community get things going like that. :)
dannyleitner Mar 27th 2011 9:51AM
With my guild i turned one of the achievments into a contest with 1-2-3 prise runner ups. The "catch 10,000 fish from pools" ive made into a tournament with gold as the prise, who ever catches the most fish in one hour and the two runners up get 500g 250g and 150g and everyone else who participated got 50g. It makes for a great RP event, and once you get 10,000 fish youll be able to purchase the Seafood Magnifique Feast from your guild vendors. So ive made some of the guild achievment's more...approachable.
Arbolamante Mar 27th 2011 9:51AM
Lol - a guild doing Critter Kill Squad made it just a wee bit hard (that is, impossible) for me to actually QUEST in that tunnel. Oh well.
Nadia Mar 27th 2011 10:27AM
When our guild did this achievement, someone showed up and told one of us she was questing.
We invited her to our group, and her quest was completed in a minute.
Arbolamante Mar 27th 2011 10:44AM
An excellent idea! Unless you are the wrong faction. Which I was. No matter, I left and came back later.
Rob Mar 27th 2011 9:53AM
These achivs fit our casual guild perfectly. We were doing NR heroics last night, two full 5 man groups. This is when i can't get a cata heroic group to save my life, never mind a raid of any sort. The only sucky thing is the requirement of 20 people to do the older 25 man raids for guild achiv. So those achivs will never happen.
razion Mar 27th 2011 9:58AM
The only achievements the guild really goes for are the ones in the PvP tabs. When we DO go after these achievements, we pick a single day, create an event, and just tear through as much of it as we can. Usually we'll get the achievement we're after, or at least make a good bit of progress.
If the achievements aren't of the PvP variety, we tend to get them on accident, which are always nice surprises.
vocenoctum Mar 27th 2011 10:30AM
While browsing through the achievements I noticed we were actually close on the cooking one, so cranked out the final 500 with some store bought goods. Then realized the alt I had cooking maxed on had just joined the guild and so I can't actually buy the recipe since it's Honored (I think), but oh well.
I'd like to grind out the flask one, but too much money.